Putting the Crew Together - The Keeper of Traken

Being that he was hard done by early in this run, I decided to address one of Tom Baker’s big moments. The big moment every Doctor has. His regeneration. From what I understand Baker’s end and Davison’s beginning is actually a trilogy starting with The Keeper of Traken which is a damn good idea. Why should an adventure end with a Doctor’s death, when you have the perfect story telling technique to have the bad guy win, yet the hero come back and right that wrong?

However, The Keeper of Traken also brings into stark relief the problem with my scattered approach to Who. Upon landing on Traken and meeting Tremas, I already know that this man will become the Master somehow.

Hello Charley, Goodbye Charley - Blue Forgotten Planet

Remember those points where the Doctor and companion go off and have adventures that we don’t need to see so the production skips them to give further writers the opportunity to use the pairing later? Those Moffat is so fond of scattering throughout his run? Big Finish dropped a major one for the Sixth Doctor and Charley with Blue Forgotten Planet.

On the one hand I was sort of amazed that Paper Cuts didn’t really address the Charley/Mila plot. Yes, Fisher made it obvious that she wasn’t Charley Proper, and that line at the end where she talks the fisherman out of joining them was very self obsessive Mila. But that was it. Which was fine because it gave Mila an adventure all of her own where everything was normal. Her and The Doctor needed a proper adventure without it being addressed. Here it shows that they’ve had many many more.

Paper Cuts

Paper Cuts is the audio story that basically derailed the entire project. I was that enthralled by the end of The Girl That Never Was that I decided to press on and finish Charley’s saga with the Doctor, not realising that the second to last one featured the Draconians from a Third Doctor story I’d not got round to. Abandoning my plans with Leela and Baker, I went back to Pertwee and made my way through Jo’s final season.

Charley takes a turn for the worst - Patient Zero

This is one I’ve been building towards the entire time. It was part of my decision to go with Charley instead of Evelyn. Way back when I first started with Big Finish, one of the earliest serials I listened to was Five and Peri in Mission of the Viyrans. It stood out from all those from that drive by being really out there, and I really wanted to listen to the sequel. That made the decision to start on the Eighth Doctor a no brainer.

That this ended up finally moving the Mystery of Charley on rather significantly gave even more resonance to this serial.

Come up Trumps - The Raincloud Man

The Raincloud Man is one of those stories that brings one of our protagonist's secrets into stark relief by having part of the episode deal with someone else in a similar situation. It's something New Who does quiet often now that we have long running storylines. Obviously it's Charley and her time with the Eighth Doctor we're dealing with here. It's still not addressed, but it's at a point where it’s got to be happening soon.

While I’ve mostly moaned in the last few serials that this isn’t being addressed, I feel The Raincloud Man hits the exact note in how not to. Mainly because it ends with Charley going far too far.

Daleks and Krotons - Two Big Finish outings

It's another duo as we press on with Six and Charley, and hope that somewhere we'll address the elephant that is Charley's time with the Eighth Doctor. We deal with two Classic enemies, the ever present Daleks, and the only seen once Krotons. It's an interesting pair.

Once More Into The Fiction - The Doomwood Curse

Slight change of plans. I'm going back to just Mondays for Who postings. Mainly because I caught myself up. Planet was delayed because I was watching it in the days before release, I haven't even started The Green Death yet. This was the plan for after Capaldi Season 2, so I just brought it forward. So for now we're with Six and Charley while I get some TV under my belt.

The Doomwood Curse seems to be a play on the idea in The Mind Robber, where we have fiction coming to life. Only instead of it being a little haphazard with its approach to fiction, we basically get a re-do of Dick Turpin. However, where the Second Doctor's trip just went straight out balls to wall 'we're now in the land of fiction', Big Finish offer more of science-y explanation. That of an alien race that doesn't understand fiction, and take it for fact by running it through a machine. A machine promptly destroyed by Charley and its nanites start changing everyone's minds to operate like characters from a gothic romance.

It Was All Going So Well - Planet of the Daleks

I think I've figured out why Frontier in Space was included in the list of recommendations I built this whole enterprise out of. It’s counterpart isn’t that good.

In one aspect Planet of the Daleks is great. A return of Dalek vs Thal, with the other Skaro natives now from the future no less, with early space travel and trying to put a stop to a big Dalek plan. Clearly it’s another riff on the the original serial with a few tweaks here and there. Which can be done well. But the execution is pretty awful.

Charley Goes Off With A Younger Man - The Condemned

The Condemned starts with a fantastic opening sequence as Charley does everything she can to avoid the Doctor’s questions, which obviously only raises his suspicions more. The fact she seems to know so much about the TARDIS and isn't surprised it’s a time machine adds to it.

However, the best bit might be rather simple in comparison when she utters her infamous “My friends call me Charley”. and the Sixth Doctor replies with “I’ll bear that in mind if we become friends.” Such a foreign thing for Eight to say, but for the more prickly Six it rings totally true. Or perhaps the Doctor's shocked at her not being that amazed at the TARDIS being “bigger on the inside” and Charley mutter she thinks it’s kinda small.

The One that Started it all - Genesis of the Daleks

Over the last wee while, my watching has been getting closer and closer to the blog deadline. Mostly thanks to new job and things like Netflix's Daredevil (which is awesome!). I was worried that at some point I'd fall behind. That's now happened. As I write this I'm a third of the way through Planet of the Daleks. Instead, I figured since he's been hard done by this run through, we'd go back to Tom Baker.

I’ve probably mentioned this in a few places by now, but Genesis of the Daleks was the first proper Classic Who I watched, and quite possibly the serial that started this whole thing rolling. This is simply because I didn’t like it.

The End of the Road? - The Girl That Never Was

With C'rizz and Absolution we did a big lookback at the companion and how it was under-developed or as if no one could make up their mind what to do with him. With Charley we don't need that. She's been pretty well defined for a long time, and The Girl That Never Was, her departure story, picks the one story thread that really suits her. Being out of time.

There's a War Coming - Frontier in Space

I’m not sure what I expected here. I knew the next serial hinged on Frontier in Space. No one recommended it, so I figured a pretty shaky story just to get to some Dalek action. Instead we get a 70’s sci-fi version of 24, by which I mean lots of political intrigue, war brewing and some casual torture thrown around.

It’s utterly brilliant and unexpected.

Goodbye C'rizz - Absolution

And thus we reach the end of C'rizz's journey inside the TARDIS.

He's quite an interesting companion. Certainly not a standard template. First of all he's visibly not human, which is something the show still hasn't done. But then the constant make-up would be expensive and time consuming. It also creates an issue whenever you do a modern day or history based story, as everyone first has to react to the alien walking around with the Doctor before we get on with things. It could be interesting for half a season, but after that it would just get in the way.

Back to Three - Carnival of Monsters

Yes, we are back with Pertwee. As much as I’m enjoying Baker and Leela, and had intended to stick with her for her entire run, I hit a bit of a hitch. See I’m way ahead on my audio listening. I’ve actually nearly finished Charley’s time with Six, nevermind Eight, and one of the last audios in that series has connections to “Frontier in Space”.

So in order to keep Charley on track, I’m derailing Leela. Besides Weng Chiang was not only the end of that particular season, but the end of Hinchcliffe’s time as Producer. I’d already earmarked it as point of a potential Doctor switch before I settled on my schedule. With the added audio wrinkle, well, on with Pertwee!

The End is in Sight - More Audio Trips with Eight

We're closing in on the end of this season with Eight, which also sees Charley and C'rizz depart the TARDIS. Or at least this one anyway. This week we cover the penultimate three episodes before we hit those departures. So hopefully we get a properly look at C'rizz's weird abilities that are starting to become a bit murky.

Casual British Racism - The Talons of Weng Chiang

The Talons of Weng Chiang is one of those big named serials that I've been looking forward to for a long time. Not only is it generally held up as one of the best, Big Finish hang a lot off of it, including Jago and Litefoot getting their own long running series.

It’s, erm, it’s a bit racist.

Journeying with Eight - Two More Big Finish

Once again into the full swing of an audio season with Eight, we have two adventures with C'rizz and Charley as we see what they get up to in the normal universe. Only the first one, we kind of don't.

Scaredy Cat
Now we get to the standard Who fare of travelling around the universe visiting nice places and things inevitably going tits up. Here we have a visit to a garden world to show C'rizz something nice, and discover a scientific research lab on there that shouldn't.

Agatha Christie IN SPACE! - The Robots of Death

Leela's second outing, The Robots of Death is one of those highly regarded episodes. But I'm not overly sure why.

Don't get me wrong. It's good. But it's not amazing. There's not much more to it than robots reprogrammed to kill.

Return to the Daleks - Terror Firma

And now we also return to the Eighth Doctor as he returns to the proper universe, and Big Finish do the only thing you can do to welcome back the Doctor. The same thing RTD did. You bring out the Daleks.

They have also decided to address a rather large elephant that has been in the room for seventeen years. Just how exactly are the Daleks about after Skaro was blown up in Remembrance of the Daleks?

The Doctor Makes Mistakes - The Face of Evil

Again we reach Tom Baker. Despite that he's the Doctor that's got the most TV appearances, he's one of the two that I've spent the least time with. Mainly due to my reticence since I disliked Genesis of the Daleks which is meant to be one of his best. However, this means there's a lot of material here that Big Finish rely on that I haven't gone near.

We've already hit one of these in a major way. Leela. When I listened to Zagreus I had my first meeting with this companion, and it meant nothing. So I figured this Who run through would entail a big stop off with Four, like last year and Three. What better place to do that with Leela's hoping on board the TARDIS?